


Lackadaisy Cornucopia

by handful_ofdust



Category: Lackadaisy
Genre: M/M, Period-Typical Anti-Semitism
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-09-24
Updated: 2014-09-24
Packaged: 2018-02-18 15:23:10
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,684
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2353172
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/handful_ofdust/pseuds/handful_ofdust
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Viktor Vasko defends Mordecai Heller, even when he doesn't want him to. The rewards are addictive.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Lackadaisy Cornucopia

1922 was the year Viktor Vasko first punched out an idiot for asking if Mordecai Heller wore that hat of his to keep his horns hidden. Later, the same idiot returned with friends, and Mordecai ended up shooting most of them; he pried the reason out of Viktor sometime afterwards, which in turn prompted him to throw a brief but intense tantrum. To snarl up at Viktor, looming there sullenly: _Moron,_ gonif, _you have all the fine restraint of an avalanche and table-manners to match! And for God's sake let me pick my own quarrels, if you're going to make such a ridiculous hash of defending my honor!_

_  
Ah, chah, piece of cow! No von tell you you haf to kill every fool who call you Jew!_

_  
I resent that! I didn't kill them all, I_ never _do, as I know you've noticed, which means it can be done. And that's because...somebody has to be left to warn off the others, you_ wall!

_  
'Vall', this is best you come up vith? You tink in English, make your brain slow._

_  
Oh, and that's the top of_ your _repertoire?_ Bulvan, balegoola, behaimeh! A broch tzu Columbus und a choleryeh ahf dihr, bei mir hust du gepoylt!

  
Pojebali kone voz! _May the horses fuck the carriage, I should leave you to valk home!_

_  
I should have such good luck!_

  
Later that night—for obvious reasons, and on hardly the first such occasion—it occurred to Viktor that almost every Slovak insult he knew not involving comparison to farm animals usually pivoted on the threat of fucking somebody else hard. Which was...not actually so bad a fate, apparently, if you were doing it right, as he could only guess he maybe was, going by the results. So perhaps people just said it because they were afraid that if they didn't, they'd forget it supposedly _was_ a curse, try it a few times, then get to like it far too much to stop.

  
Though he couldn't have explained it so compactly, in English or otherwise, Viktor felt this really summed up the shared insanity that was he and Mordecai, in a nutshell.

  
***

  
Atlas May made a habit of picking up strays, amongst them Viktor himself, for which he continued to be grateful. But this was also how, in 1920, Viktor began playing chauffeur to a strange, skinny little Jewish boy who Atlas had brought back from New York City wearing an overcoat roughly twice his size, whose laughable dimensions soon proved to contain a pair of stolen automatics—a pissy, bossy, fussy creature with bad eyes, persnickety tastes and a complete lack of any sort of sense of how to deal with others without making them want to kill him on a daily basis, Viktor himself often very much included.

  
Over the course of the next year, he watched that same boy—Mordecai—grow up but not particularly fill in, moving paycheck to paycheck from awkward and lost to dapper and frightening. Even saw him become a bit of a clothes-horse, if far too easily teased on the subject, often complaining (when prodded):

  
 _It's only_ practical, _Viktor; I_ need _my clothes tailored, to hide the guns. Work ethic, presentation. Something you really should start to consider in reference to yourself, perhaps, every now and then—_

  
Noise, noise. To which Viktor would just nod, mostly, since there wasn't much point in doing anything else; Mordecai would simply keep on talking in that absent, odd, contradictory way of his, trying to explain things he didn't understand to himself 'till he ran out of words or ran himself into silence, or both. Fantastic in a fire-fight, all-but-useless everywhere else; if only he could arrange to be shot at every day for the rest of his life, then maybe...

  
But then again, that did seem to be what he was already doing, didn't it? So no need to make the suggestion, at least not out loud.

  
***

  
The first bed they broke together was the one in Mordecai's old apartment, which collapsed beneath them with comedic swiftness, almost exactly right at the moment of decision. Without missing a beat, Mordecai had looked back over his shoulder and told Viktor, infuriatingly calm: “You're paying for that, I hope you know.” To which Viktor groaned, clawed at both his slim hips at once, and roared in return: “I pay for it naow!”

  
(Good as it'd felt at the time, though, even he wasn't sure what he might've been trying to say, exactly.)

  
Later, Mordecai ran down the numbers for him, bent on proving all the reasons why—while undebatably enjoyable—Viktor's prowess in what was left of his bed still wasn't _literally_ worth a new mattress-board and frame. By way of reply, Viktor tried to shut him up with his tongue (which worked, but only for so long), then fucked him again, twice as strenuously: First amongst the ruins, then up against the wall, 'till he finally stopped talking long enough to howl, scratch all up and down Viktor's spine, and come so hard he soaked both their bellies. Let it never be said that Mordecai Heller couldn't be amusing company, if you only approached him the right way.

  
What Viktor had found so far, however, was that the key trick lay in not ever letting yourself get so annoyed with him that you forgot it, even for a little while.

  
***

  
Viktor still remembered turning to Mordecai sometime near the end of 1921, after a supposedly celebratory flurry of bunny hugs and bullets, and demanding of him: _God damn, little killer, vhy you always_ look _at me? Vhat is it you vant?_ To which Mordecai had snapped back, apparently genuinely stumped: _I don't_ know. And Viktor had laughed for almost a minute straight, before finally saying—

  
 _Hah. Vell,_ I _do._

  
( _All right, then, don't keep it to yourself. Go on and_ show _me._ )

  
At which point, for his many sins, Viktor had been stupid enough to give him one terrifying kiss sharp as a bite, like he wanted to eat the bastard raw, and hadn't let up even when Mordecai bit him in return, so deep they both tasted blood. Got one fine-boned wrist grabbed tight in either hand to anchor him, prevent him from going for his guns; just kept at him 'till lack of air took over, 'till Mordecai's eyelids began to flutter. 'Till he folded up against Viktor, slack in his arms with that smart, bitter mouth of his working sweetly 'round Viktor's tongue, panting up into Viktor's palate—'till those little round pince-nez specs of his went smudged and skewed, and suddenly he was planted ass-first in Viktor's lap with his legs hooked 'round Viktor's knees, pulling him in tighter by both ears to kiss him back over and over again, desperately. As though he was drowning, and Viktor's lungs were his only source of air.

  
Fucking, it turned out, was something Mordecai did with the same reckless efficiency he did everything else: A one-man brawl, struggling two-fisted towards the little death with a massive, out-sized expenditure of strength, and dragging Viktor right along with him. And while Viktor supposed he could've broken free—hah, _knew_ it, no matter what Mordecai thought to throw at him—he soon found he hadn't wanted to, not then, and not now, either.

  
Never yet.

  
***

  
(But: _This boy will kill you, fool,_ a voice sometimes told him, from the back of his head, in those increasingly few and far between moments of clarity— _maybe without wanting to, but he'll kill you, all the same. That's all he does, all he's made for. The son of the goddamn Angel of Death in person and you just had to stick your dick inside him, two years after getting your own eye knocked out for believing America meant what it said. What were you thinking, if anything?_

  
 _What he feels like in my arms, after,_ he told that voice, sometimes, before snorting, and wanting to slap himself in the face: Such folly, such arrogance! And besides: _That you and only you can do this to him, innocent as he remains, in his odd way_...this would be far more the truth, as that voice well knew, and Viktor likewise. The prideful sin for which he really _would_ have to pay someday, eventually.)

  
***

  
In the meanwhile, they lay there in bed once more—Viktor's, since Mrs Bapka upstairs might as well be blind _and_ deaf, and his taste in furniture tended to the far more sturdily-made—with Mordecai deep asleep and Viktor still awake, studying the marvel of his naked face, all the more vulnerable for not knowing itself observed. Watched him scowl at some passing dream, hands twitching, feeling for triggers.

  
 _Mama,_ Viktor had once heard him say on another night, into the pillow, _Hannuleh can't die. She's a_ baby. With...such _annoyance_ in his voice, right that moment—such a terrible lack of understanding, a sense that such things simply should not be allowed.

  
How strange was this, though? Because when he was awake, Viktor had come to feel, Mordecai quite liked the idea of pain; not the giving or taking of it, so much, as its own existence. For although he could certainly feel pleasure, even give it in return, it was still messy, uncontrollable, discomfiting—whereas pain was the one thing everybody shared, reckoning it by almost exactly the same scale. It never changed, only mounted by slow or fast degrees until...at last...

  
...it was over, undeniably. With no coming back.

  
 _Poor little monster,_ Viktor thought, tracing the knobs of Mordecai's sleeping spine, so carefully he barely felt him shiver. _You will do_ so _much damage. This world will break itself on you or you on it, and I will help, as much as I can. I won't be able to stop myself._

_  
See how you get to me, you awful little man? And you don't even need your guns, to do it..._

  
But Mordecai, in typical fashion, stayed asleep. Oblivious. So eventually, Viktor shut his eye, hoping to join him.

  
THE END


End file.
